Excerpts from newspapers that may be of use for our readers.

In gov’t she can’t fight racism

NYT, 7/24 — No time for facts…. The important part of the Shirley Sherrod story was that we are all being sold a tragic bill of goods by the powerful forces that insist on pitting blacks, whites and other ethnic groups against one another.

Ms. Sherrod came to the realization, as she witnessed the plight of poverty-stricken white farmers in the South more than two decades ago, that the essential issue in this country “is really about those who have versus those who don’t.”

She explained how the wealthier classes have benefited from whites and blacks constantly being at each other’s throats, and how rampant racism has insidiously kept so many struggling whites from recognizing those many things they and their families have in common with economically struggling blacks, Hispanics and so on.

Big money spreads climate lies

NYT, 7/26 — If you want to understand opposition to climate action, follow the money. The economy as a whole wouldn’t be significantly hurt if we put a price on carbon, but certain industries — above all, the coal and oil industries — would. And those industries have mounted a huge disinformation campaign to protect their bottom lines.

Look at the scientists who question the consensus on climate change; look at the organizations pushing fake scandals; look at the think-tanks claiming that any effort to limit emissions would cripple the economy. Again and again, you’ll find that they’re on the receiving end of a pipeline of funding that starts with big energy companies....

Or look at the politicians who have been most vociferously opposed to climate action. Where do they get much of their campaign money? You already know the answer.

Early steps toward a China war

NYT, 7/27 — Beijing — The Chinese government reacted angrily on Monday to an announcement by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that Washington might step into a long-simmering territorial dispute between China and its smaller neighbors in the South China Sea….

Mrs. Clinton apparently surprised Beijing by saying the United States had a “national interest” in seeking to mediate the dispute, which involves roughly 200 islands….

The state-run news media…described Mrs. Clinton’s speech as “an attack” and a cynical effort to suppress China’s aspirations – and its expanding might….

The area of contention…is an increasingly important conduit for a third of the world’s maritime trade and much of the region’s energy supplies. Just as compelling are the enormous deposits of oil and natural gas thought to be under the ocean floor….

“The U.S. feels like this is the time to play the political and military card since it’s very difficult for them to compete with China in the economic sphere”….

In March, China warned two visiting American officials that it would not tolerate interference in the South China Sea.

‘Strong borders’ are murderous

NYT, 7/29 – The Pima County morgue is running out of space as the number of Latin American immigrants found dead in the deserts around Tucson has soared this year….

Arizona….law has not kept the immigrants from trying to cross hundreds of miles of desert on foot in record-breaking heat….

Human rights groups say it is the government’s sustained crackdown on human smuggling that has led to more deaths.

“The more that you militarize the border, the more you push the migrant flows into more isolated and desolate areas, and people hurt or injured are just left behind.”

War? What war?

NYT, 7/25 – “The army is at war, but the country is not,” said David M. Kennedy, the Stanford University historian. “We have managed to create and field an armed force that can engage in very, very lethal warfare without the society in whose name it fights breaking a sweat.” The result, he said, is “a moral hazard for the political leadership [can] resort to force in the knowledge that civil society will not be deeply disturbed.”

Big charities can’t fix capitalism

GW, 7/30 – For 14 of the last 16 years, Bill Gates has been the richest person on earth. More that a decade ago, he decided to start handing over the “large majority” of his wealth – currently around $55bn – for the foundation to distribute, so that “the people with the most urgent needs…gain the power to lift themselves out of poverty.” In 2006, Warren Buffett, the third-richest person in the world, announced that he too would give a large proportion of his assets to the foundation…Accounts show an endowment of $37bn, making it the world’s largest private foundation.

The internet, the modern power of celebrity, and the ease of travel to virtually anywhere in the world enjoyed by the super-rich, has made it possible for the more thoughtful, socially conscious of them – such as Gates and the financier George Soros – to become…more potent even than the previous generation of famous philanthropists, such as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller.

However, there is a problem with the Gates Foundation…. On the ground in Africa or Asia the Foundation’s immense-sounding grants are a miniscule fraction of what is required to create a fairer world. “In agriculture,” says [Gates’ agriculture director] Steiner, “the problem’s this big” – he throws out his long arms – “and our resources are this big” – he pinches an inch of air between a finger and thumb.

Hunger spreads as banks gamble

GW, 7/23 - Financial speculators are under renewed fire from anti-poverty campaigners for their bets on food prices, which are blamed for…threatening the livelihoods of farmers in developing countries.

The WDM’s Great Hunger Lottery report says, “risky and secretive” bets on food prices have exacerbated the effect of bad harvests in recent years…and risk sparking unrest, as seen in the Mexico and Haiti food riots of 2008….

“Investment banks such as Goldman Sachs are making huge profits by gambling on the price of everyday foods…and the world’s poorest suffer because basic foods become unaffordable.”

Protests win $ for Nike workers

NYT, 7/27 – Facing pressure from universities and student groups, the apparel maker Nike announced on Monday that it would pay $1.54 million to help 1,800 workers in Honduras who lost their jobs when two subcontractors closed their factories.

Nike agreed to the payment after several universities and a nationwide group…pressed it to pay some $2 million in severance that the two subcontractors had failed to pay….

“This may be a watershed moment…[u]p until now, major apparel brands have steadfastly refused to take any direct financial responsibility for the obligations to the workers in their subcontractors’ [factories].”

“Nike plays factory against factory, causing them to shave a penny here and a penny there, creating an ultra-competitive environment that drives down wages and gives factory…owners virtually no choice but to disrespect workers’ basic rights.”

Explaining Monday’s agreement, United Students Against Sweatshops, said “After we got over 100 universities to boycott[,] Nike understood the university pressure would not simply go away.”

Who’s inhuman – N. Korea or U.S.?

NYT, 7/22 – Mr. Cumings’s book is a squirm-inducing assault on America’s moral behavior during the Korean War[.]…It’s a book that puts the reflexive anti-Americanism of North Korea’s leaders into sympathetic historical context.

Mr. Cumings argues that the Korean War was a civil war with long, tangled historical roots, one in which America had little business meddling. He notes how “appallingly dirty” the war was. In terms of civilian slaughter, he declares, “our…ally was the worst offender, contrary to the American image of the North Koreans as fiendish terrorists.”

Mr. Cumings likens the indiscriminate American bombing of North Korea to genocide.[”] He details the north’s own atrocities, and acknowledges that current “North Korean political practice is reprehensible.’ But he says that we view that country through “Orientalist bigotry” seeing only its morbid qualities….

“There is no evidence in the North Korean experience of the mass violence against whole classes of people or the wholesale ‘purge’….

The most eye-opening sections of “The Korean War” detail America’s saturation bombing of Korea’s north. “What hardly any Americans know or remember,” Mr. Cummings writes, “is that we carpet-bombed the north for three years with next to no concern for civilian casualities.” The United States dropped more bombs in Korea (635,000 tons, as well as 32,557 tons of napalm) than in the entire Pacific theater during World War II. Our logic seemed to be, he says, that “they are savages, so that gives us the right to shower napalm on innocents.”

His book is a bitter pill, a sobering corrective.

Job training doesn’t create jobs

NYT, 7/19 – [N]ow the number of job openings is vastly outnumbered by people out of work.

“It’s such an ugly situation that job training can’t solve it,” said…a job training expert[,] “When you have five people unemployed for every vacancy, you can train all the people you want and unfortunately only one-fifth of the people will be hired. Training doesn’t create jobs.”….

Today, even highly skilled people with job experience of two decades or more languish among the unemployed. Whole industries are being scaled down by automation, the shifting of work overseas, and the recession.

The literature is not encouraging.

A 2006 study prepared for the Labor Department found virtually no benefit for 8,000 randomly selected recipients who entered federally financed training programs.

Child miners boost profits in India

LaMonde – Child labour is forbidden in India. The federal parliament passed a law recently decreeing compulsory schooling for children[.]…Yet [in north-east India] there are more than 70,000 underage labourer in the pits…..

[T]he children of Soo-Kilo squat around pools of filthy water, and scrape away the coal dust that sticks to their skin[.]….

Below ground, there are no machines to do the work, since men and children cost much less than machinery…[T]here is not enough oxygen and it is hard to breathe. The workers’ pay depends on how much coal they mine….”There are even drugs to boost their stamina[.]”….

Why are the mines not closed for using illegal child labour?...[M]ine owners are prominent among those who pass the laws in the regional parliaments.

India path won’t cure Africa

GW, 7/23 – There are more poor people in eight states of India than in the 26 countries of sub-Saharan Africa.  More than 410 million people live in poverty in the Indian states, including Bihar, Utter Pradesh and West Bengal, researchers at Oxford University found. The “intensity” of the poverty in parts of India is equal to, if not worse than, that in Africa.

When the vast central Indian Madhya Pradesh state, which has a population of 70 million, was compared with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the war-racked African state of 62 million people, the two were found to have near-identical levels of poverty….

The study’s conclusion will reinforce claims that distribution of the wealth generated by India’s rapid economic growth – recently around 10% year on year – is deeply unequal